As the long and hot summer wearies on and I see the children take off from school and enjoy the summer holiday in spite of the scorching sun, I am reminded of the Summer Love Affairs of my childhood.
When I was a kid, summer was a time to fall in love - to fall in love with life. It was a time like no other, because all I did during summer was to live life in a timeless bliss.
There was something so consistent and characteristic about my childhood summer love affairs. It is about that that I want to reminisce upon. It is about loving different kinds of young ones in the animal and bird kingdom by nurturing them into adulthood.
Every moment of my being during summer holidays would be centered around my love affairs with the young being that my sister and I nurture. The young ones could be chicks, pups, squirrels, sparrows, butterfly larva… When I wake up in those summer mornings, first thing I would do would be to go and see how the young ones are thriving. Every other hour I would have to feed it. The rest of the time I and my sister would play with it. Chicks will go to sleep early at night and I would watch it sleep, but they wake up early in the morning. My mom would put the chick on my face to make me wake up and I would wake up the feeling of the soft feet of the chick on my face. In fact I wake up kissing the chicks. If it is pups that we grow, it would be pup on my face to make me wake up by licking my cheeks, nose or lips or eyes... And who wouldn't want to kiss a pup.
Such were my summer love affairs.
Well, in summer my sister and I would go to my grand mother’s house. In my grand mother’s house which was a kind of a farm house, were many squirrels having their homes. During summers the squirrels have kids. And sometimes the parent squirrels disappear, accidentally dead or stoned by young bored kids in summer holidays seeking some excitement by training themselves with country-made catapults.
For me and my sister the greatest pleasure of life was to take those young ones which actually look like mice without hair, eyes still closed and then feed them with milk using rubber ink-fillers and nurture them and make them grow. And when they can live on their own, we would leave them to go off into the wild.
The hardest part would be when we have to let-go of them. Everytime we have to let go of them, it would be so heart wrenching as though we are letting go the 'love of my life'. Our mother said that if we loved them, we should never cage the animal or bird. Whatever we grew it ought not to be caged, unless it was for its own safety from prowling cats.
I vividly I remember how exuberant I was when one afternoon I was walking in my grandmother’s big house and found a little orphaned squirrel squeaking as its parents had disappeared. I searched for it home and found a couple of more little orphans. We adopted them and grew them. I think only one survived to become an adult squeriel, my memory is vague on numbers though it is vivid about emotions.
Invariably every summer, we’ll have something to nurture, grow and let then loose. Sometimes I’ll cry a little when I have to let loose, but I knew I would have to do it because I loved it.
I think two or three summers, we loved orphaned squirrels. Other summers, it would be little chickens which we would buy from shops just to have the joy of loving and nurturing them, but most of them would die in a fortnight or in a month. Of the many that we grew I remember only one that survived to become an fully grown hen.
We have lost many a chick to the vultures. I have seen vultures swoop down from nowhere and take my chicks away even as the chicks wander away when I play with them in the open terrace of our home.
How I used to cry when I lost my chicks to vultures. I would try to feel how painful it would be for the chicks to have its body torn and intestines pulled out and eaten by vultures. I used to console myself with the thought that that was how nature worked. Sometimes I used to wish I could do the same thing to the vultures that it did to my chicks, othertimes I used to wish that I had a gun to kill the vultures that tried to harm my chicks.
During a few summers we grew sparrows and in one it was an abandoned cuckoo bird instead of sparrows. Invariably during every holiday we’ll nurture the larva of butterfly, my sister and I would love it when the larvae used to crawl across our palms. We’ll get saddened when they begin to metamorphosis to a pupa. Then would begin the patient wait to see it turn to a beautiful pupa and then to turn dark brown and ugly pupa and then wait even more to see the butterfly break open from within the pupa and come out with ‘flying colours’.
I have observed many times the whole process of how the butterfly breaks open comes out begins to walk, spread and dry its wet wings, stretch its beautifully colored wings and then suddenly, it is off airborne. It is generally difficult to predict when it would take off. It would seem to be warming up and then suddenly in a flash it takes off. So marvelous is the creation of God.
We also used to grow pups. I used to love the feeling of the pup crawling on me - to feel its soft paws and the sharp nail on the skin and to feel it lick my face would be the most pleasurable experience. But eventually when the pup would grow up we would always give it off to someone, until we grew our dear dashund ‘winny’ which eventually lived 12 years with us and is now buried under a coconut tree in our backyard.
There is one incident that I can never forget. It was with one of the squirrel’s young ones. In my excitement at having won a caroom board game with my mom and sister, I was so elated and I was jumping around unaware of the young squirrel whose eyes had not yet opened was crawling around. The unthinkable happened, my jumping feet landed on its head at an oblique angle.
It started squealing. My mom said that it would die as the shape of its head had been changed. Every 30 minutes it would squeal and throw itself up in seizures. If we kept it in its box it kept hitting it head against the walls during the seizures causing more pain. So we hung it in a soft cloth bag so that when it jumps around in a fit, it would not hurt its head. In fact, the soft cloth bag was none other than my lunch bag which couldn’t find a better use during holidays.
We were expecting it to die off slowly. I was so guilty because I was the cause of so much pain to the squirrel. To redeem myself, I would diligently look after it. I would take it every hour to feed milk through an ink-filler. I would feel so sad that I was the cause of its lopsided head which I would hold with my fingers to the tip of the ink filler and gently squeeze the rubber just enough to get the right flow of milk so that an overflow of milk which could enter the tiny nostrils which is just above the mouth would be prevented.
I never thought it would survive, it kept having the seizures for many days. I and my sister used to pray that it would live. To me, those days would be tense. We would go out and when we come back the thought occupying my mind would be whether or not the little one would be alive when we got back home. And it was a miracle that the squirrel slowly recovered under our care and became an adult eating fruits and nuts. The time came for it to be let-go and I remember letting go of it in the Neem tree that was in front of our house. It quickly disappeared into the tree.
I don’t think I cried that time. I was glad that the hurt I had caused was healed completely.
As I reminiscence on my love summer love affairs, I realize how blessed I have been to have had so many lovely experiences. I think when Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden the whole of their time was a summer love affair for them. No wonder Adam enjoyed naming all the animals. I dont think he stoped with naming the animals he must have played with them, just as I hope we'll play with them in the 1000 years of peace on earth when the Lord reigns. I thank God for all the lovely experience of my childhood which perhaps was just a foretaste of the 1000 years of peace that Christ promised.
What has life become now? I have almost forgotten the foretaste. In the corporate world, I live in the comfort of air-conditioned towers made of glass, steel and concrete completely protected form the scorching summer's heat. But at a HUGE cost - the cost of being alienated from any possibility of rejuvenating my summer's love affairs and that of being estranged from loving life in a timeless bliss.
